Nature Makes a Comeback in Wisconsin Schools

Wisconsin State Journal – January 03, 2009
By Andy Hall

Geeta Dawar takes her seventh grade science students outside their Madison school to examine cracks in the sidewalk.

David Spitzer gets his Madison elementary students to notice flocks of migrating geese overhead as the kids walk to school.

And David Ropa has his seventh graders, even on an arctic morning, use their bare hands to dip testing vials into Lake Mendota.

Nature is on the rise in many schools across Wisconsin, as educators strive to reverse a major societal shift toward technology and indoor activities.
Today's students are the first generation in human history raised without a strong relationship with the natural world, said Jeremy Solin, who heads a state forest education program at UW-Stevens Point for students in kindergarten through high school.

The phenomenon of "nature deficit disorder" — a term coined by author Richard Louv in his 2005 book "Last Child in the Woods" — is contributing to childhood obesity, learning disabilities, and developmental delays, experts say.

Solin cited research showing that on average, American children spend more than 30 hours per week connected to electronic devices, but less than an hour a month in nature. The disparity is rooted, in part, in parents' increased reluctance to allow their children to freely roam outdoors, for fear of strangers, traffic, mosquitoes and other hazards.

Solin said he's been amazed, through discussions with more than 1,000 people at school districts, to find the same pattern in Wisconsin's rural and urban areas.
"Kids are able to identify hundreds of company logos but nothing in their backyard," Solin told a group of educators at a session examining nature deficit disorder at a state teachers conference in October.

There are obstacles

To reconnect children to nature, school districts are expanding school forests around the state while also developing low-cost, small projects such as rain gardens that can be effective even in poor urban areas.

"You need to find nature and connect with it where it is," said Tim Peterson, science and environmental education coordinator for the Madison School District, who oversees the school district's forest and also works to infuse everyday classroom activities with connections to the natural world.

However, obstacles abound.

Although research shows that outdoors-based learning can help raise academic performance, it's difficult to spend time outdoors, many educators say, given schools' tight budgets and the federal No Child Left Behind law's focus on reading and math test scores.
There are signs of change. In September, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure known as the No Child Left Inside Act to boost programs that expose children to the outdoors.

In Wisconsin, which in 1927 became the first state to create legislation for school forests, 205 of 426 school districts have forests (which often include wetlands and prairies) and a few districts are added to the list each year through private donations or public funding.

Dane County districts with forests include Madison, DeForest, Deerfield, Monona Grove, Cambridge, Verona and McFarland, which hosts one of the state's newest school forests. An increasing number of schools are creating gardens and prairies, often on the school grounds for easy access.

Their goals: Help students build a sense of connection to the land, demonstrate sustainable methods of management and, sometimes, raise money for the school district through sales of such products as timber, grapevine wreaths, Christmas trees and maple syrup.

Some fear bugs

Outdoor classrooms, though, can be intimidating. Many teachers and students are afraid of bugs, are reluctant to get dirty and are uneasy outdoors — at least until they begin to develop a bond with nature.

Harsh conditions don't deter Ropa and his students at Madison's Spring Harbor Middle School on the city's West Side. The school focuses on environmental science — and it's so popular that students are chosen by lottery.

On a recent morning with temperatures in single digits, Ropa took four successive classes to the Spring Harbor boat landing. The purpose, student Cameron Neusen said on the short walk, was to figure out "how healthy the lake is right now."

"At first, it's like, 'Why are we doing this?' student Marcus Fennessy said, his teeth chattering after he gathered a sample. "But...you want to do it again. It makes you feel like a scientist."

At Wright Middle School, Dawar finds simple ways to help her students develop a connection to the outdoor world in the urban areas on Madison's South Side. She leads them to the sidewalk outside the school on Fish Hatchery Road, where they discover cracks — some manmade to allow for expansion, and others inflicted by nature through the forces of freezing and thawing.

"They are amazed to see why there are gaps and why it's not a single sheet," Dawar said.

She has led expeditions to the school's parking lot, where two cars last year got stuck in gargantuan potholes, and to nearby Promega Corp., where students marveled at a demonstration in bioluminescence — light-emitting bacteria they cultured themselves — to understand how fireflies work their magic.

To begin exploring the basics of water pollution, Dawar recently had her students add salt and chalk dust to vials of water.

"It looks like milk," seventh grader Suriel Perez said after mixing the chalk dust and water.

"Don't drink it," Dawar told him with a smile.

Soon, the chalk dust had settled to the bottom of the vial — an example of a type of sediment that could be filtered from water. The salt, though, remain dissolved in the water, illustrating why high levels of salt can wash off of Madison's icy streets and pollute the lakes.

"When they see something, they learn better," Dawar said.

Occasionally, she said, students will needlessly kill bugs they've used in experiments. She uses it as part of the lesson, telling the students, "Whether it is a milkweed bug or a tiny plant, the DNA combination that it has is very unique, so you should respect that."

Full of questions

Spitzer, who teaches fourth grade at Madison's Lincoln Elementary, said he takes his students to the school district's forest, which covers more than 300 acres, but it's equally important to teach students how to observe what's around them. They collect the exoskeletons of cicadas from their backyards and bring them to class, full of questions about what happened to the creature that once lived inside.

As they study the changing seasons, students look at how plants and animals prepare for what's to come. Leaves fall. Geese fly south. You can find this in your neighborhood, Spitzer tells them, "so go take a look tonight."

His students also use technology to connect with nature, tracking the migrations of whooping cranes on the Web site of the International Crane Foundation and performing math calculations to understand the speed and distance of the trip.

In the small Brodhead School District, 35 miles south of Madison, retired teacher Paul Roemer and his wife, Alice, seek to instill an appreciation of nature in young students through a popular summer program, Cabin Kids, that has operated for 15 years in a restored 1880s cabin on school property.

The couple raised their three sons in Brodhead, and "we don't see the kids out playing in the parks like we used to," said Alice Roemer, who worries that even in the rural community, children are spending too much time with computers and video games.

Paul Roemer, who taught elementary music, said the outdoors has both a calming and exhilarating effect on students, especially those who are viewed as being too squirmy or having signs of attention deficit disorder.

He gets the students into the school's arboretum to wander the Poison Ivy and Bunny trails. They learn to recognize the call of a cardinal, a wren and a bluejay. They feast on wild blackberries and mulberries, savor the scents of bee balm and lavender hyssop, and gingerly handle prickly pear cactus.

"That's why even though I'm 63, I'm hesitant to give this up," Roemer said.

"It's good for the soul."